240 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



the year 1746 it became necessary to build a larger and 

 more comfortable house of worship. In June a committee 

 of three, Joshua Bates, James Stetson, and John Stephen- 

 son, were appointed to draw a plan for a new meeting- 

 house. The plans were accepted the next September, 

 and a committee of five was appointed to compute the 

 cost. It was decided to divide one half of the cost 

 among the pews to be built, leaving the other half for 

 general assessment. 



Each man paid ten pounds for his pew, and a building 

 committee was chosen October 20, 1746, to build the 

 house we now see upon the Common. It was finished the 

 next year, but more can be said of the church life in a 

 later chapter. 



One of the cases of self-sufficiency practiced in those 

 early days was in the care of the sick. Physicians were 

 not very plentiful or skillful in those times. The first pro- 

 fessional physician in Cohasset was later than 1750, Dr. 

 Lazarus Beal, of Rocky Nook. In Scituate as early as 

 1 7 19 Dr. Isaac Otis was practicing, and Dr. Benjamin 

 Stockbridge as early as 1730. 



But herbs and home concoctions were the main reliance 

 of Cohasset settlers in battling with disease ; bunches of 

 mint, fennel, liverwort, tansy, and many other herbs that 

 were considered medicinal were kept hanging in spare 

 rooms or attics, ready to be steeped and made into strong 

 messes of stuff for patients to swallow. Some women in 

 every town had a genius at nursing the sick, and they 

 remembered all the nostrums for human ills they e\ier 

 heard. 



Native sense and a miraculous intuition sometimes com- 

 bined with blundering superstition in these unschooled 

 physicians ; but in the case of anything serious, like diph- 

 theria or typhoid fever, there was small hope of recovery. 



In the fall of 1735 there fell upon this community that 

 dreadful germ disease now called diphtheria, which in 



